To get them to help re-elect the Coalition next March, Pensioners are once more exempt from an increase to their $2.50 daily cap, while of course to subsidise that, the transfer discount will remain unchanged at $2, and all other daily/weekly/Sunday caps will see an increase with the inflation.

Also, Andrew, try doing your homework before telling pre-election lies.....Opal has not been frozen from fares for five years, it went up 2014-2015 across all modes.

TfNSW wrote:Opal is geographically the world’s largest electronic ticketing system

Suica? OV-chipkaart?

I think you're right that the OV Chipkaart is bigger; that's one card for the entire Netherlands. And then thats all trains, all buses, all trams, all metro's, ferries...

NSW is 804,444km square km, Netherlands is 44,543. But the Netherlands doesn't have a massive chunk of country that's just country, unlike NSW. Towns are very close by, theres way too many private operators there for me to remember with all their buses, here, you can count the number of private (bus) operators where you can use Opal on two hands. Sydney trains network (including trainlink) is 2031km, the Dutch Railway network is 3061km. Which by the way, the entirety of, you can use your Ov-Chipkaart on, not this confusion of working out when can you not use your Opal Card any further on NSW Trainlink here.

And I'm going back for a month at the end of this month, look forward to being able to properly choose between a hoopla of periodicals which were fairly retained in their original form when they transitioned to the card, or travelling on balance (where you pay per km, not biased broken fare bands), as well as having a card with my photo on it...not this travel reward /transfer discount junk

Last edited by Jurassic_Joke on Wed Jun 13, 2018 6:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I read that Pensioner ticket hasn't had a fare rise since 2005 I guess government can't politically afford to rise pensioner fares consider people 65+ make a significant amount of the electorate particularly marginal seats.

Frosty wrote:I read that Pensioner ticket hasn't had a fare rise since 2005 I guess government can't politically afford to rise pensioner fares consider people 65+ make a significant amount of the electorate particularly marginal seats.

There were people complaining about the $1•10 gold opal fare rise that Ipart put in their review where the fare would go from $2•50 to $3•60 then there's the backlash from the 2005 fare increase where it went from $1•10 for STA buses and Cityrail only pensioner ticket to a $2•50 all mode travel ticket witch was branded the pensioner excursion ticket

Frosty wrote:I read that Pensioner ticket hasn't had a fare rise since 2005 I guess government can't politically afford to rise pensioner fares consider people 65+ make a significant amount of the electorate particularly marginal seats.

Exactly right, and the reasoning you just used will no doubt will the justification for hiking the Gold daily cap right after the election if the Coalition wins again. The sooner, the better, so Seniors have more chance forgetting at the 2023 election. "We want to keep downward pressure on everyone including seniors, but we cannot ignore that the daily cap has remain unchanged for almost a decade and a half..." You can't trust them. They completely knifed regular commuters in the back with the free trip removal which almost no-one saw coming, buttered them up with almost no Opal fare increases right up to the 2015 election, then look what happened a year later in 2016.

Will be the exact same here I'm certain. The Tories have no word. Do they think we've forgotten about the free trip removal, having done that early in their term? Nope (and if you did, I hope I have sufficiently reminded you of this bait and switch as we head into the next election), I and many others certainly have not.

The free trip got removed because it was being abused in part,And also to pay for the transfer benefit (not full interchange but close enough for people transferring to 0-3km bus/LR journeys) which benefited a large number of people (granted not everyone).

I believe the analysis at the time was that it was revenue neutral, not sure if this has been borne out.

moa999 wrote:The free trip got removed because it was being abused in part,And also to pay for the transfer benefit (not full interchange but close enough for people transferring to 0-3km bus/LR journeys) which benefited a large number of people (granted not everyone).

I believe the analysis at the time was that it was revenue neutral, not sure if this has been borne out.

It is just a modified version of ipart proposal. The ipart proposal showed net revenue gain and I think the same would apply to the implemented version.

Personally, I think the changes were good. I get more benefit out of the transfer then I do from the free trips, on the whole (even though my daily commute is just a single bus ride). And if I do want to take a ferry on Saturdays it's half price and Sundays only 2.60 for unlimited trips - this is still a quite good deal. And I can hardly fault the fares for going up to match inflation. I think the vitriol a couple posts prior is misplaced.

The 8 and free was clearly being rorted. Remember the days of the Monday morning shuttle when people were shuttling back and forth between the 2 light rail stops in Darling Harbour working multiple cards to get the required number of trips for about $18 while others were paying $60?

Governments tend to shy away from taking on pensioners. They are well organised, have time on their hands and make up a sizeable part of the membership of both parties. Think on the bright side, we all will one day be beneficiaries.

Jurassic_Joke wrote:I think you're right that the OV Chipkaart is bigger; that's one card for the entire Netherlands. And then thats all trains, all buses, all trams, all metro's, ferries...

NSW is 804,444km square km, Netherlands is 44,543. But the Netherlands doesn't have a massive chunk of country that's just country, unlike NSW. Towns are very close by, theres way too many private operators there for me to remember with all their buses, here, you can count the number of private (bus) operators where you can use Opal on two hands. Sydney trains network (including trainlink) is 2031km, the Dutch Railway network is 3061km. Which by the way, the entirety of, you can use your Ov-Chipkaart on, not this confusion of working out when can you not use your Opal Card any further on NSW Trainlink here.

But Opal doesn't cover all of NSW. Would be interesting to know how much is within its boundaries.

The Sydney Classic and Antique Truck (and Bus) ShowOn again June 2019@ The Museum of Fire.

While its semantics I think OV-Chipkaart is actually a single card that is now shared by multiple transport operators (eg. Amsterdam and Rotterdam are separate) - would be like ACT adopting Opal (as has been suggested).

The Japanese systems are all separate but mostly interoperable, although some cards work better than others on the private lines (the Japanese ownership model is complicated)

When I go back in a couple of weeks/come back a month later, perhaps I'll have more to say on my findings! The two systems are actually really nice to compare, there are some good paralels, in fact, one of the biggest is actually the disposable cardboard Single-use cards (https://www.treinreiziger.nl/wp-content ... rpchip.jpg) for the train (including the premium), when paper tickets were phased out. I have a feeling Transport for NSW actually took inspiration from NS (Dutch equivalent of SydneyTrains/NSWTrainlink) here when deciding how to get rid of paper tickets. Because TfNSW (2016) and NS (2014) took an identical approach in gradually phasing out all paper tickets, singles/returns last left, then single use cards with premium as replacement. Similarly, when paper tickets existed, for off-peak discounts (there its 40%, ours is 30%), there was only a morning off-peak from 4am-9am as it was impossible to implement and regulate an afternoon peak, but ever since the OV-Chipkaart rolled out (like Opal)peak hours changed from 6:30am-9am/4pm-6:30pm. Massive backlash at first (because there you could purchase discounted single tickets, not a 'required' offpeak return that we had) and many people were significantly worse off, but like us and Opal 8 then free, people eventually just sucked it up. At least during NS' transition to the Ov-Chip, they made up for it by introducing a brand new range of electronic periodicals to cater for everyone, albeit timed to the new off-peak hours (such as one for free weekend travel + discounted weekday off-peak/free off peak travel/20% discount during peak, 40% outside) in addition to older MyTrain/MyMulti style periodicals, other words, a suite products that really encourage you to get out and roam, and look what we have instead. It's a joke, sorry, because the way I see it now from my perspective as a very frequent traveller, Opal is meant to reward you more the less you use it. Thats why its just a collection of single trips, with discounts (travel reward + transfer) that really just serve to try and stop you reaching caps to get free rides, and as such, favour less frequent users.

Anyways, seperate topic but N90 and N91 are actually, despite whats on Opals website, included in Ryde's Cash Free Opal Only list of services. Almost every trip someone wants to buy a ticket and they just get waved on and I notice the cash float is no longer present in any of those buses. But I support this, because its safer for the driver.

What is on the Opal website to contradict N90/N91? - I cant find anything. I do note that Opal is out of date - it still mentions N100. But then I expect the Opla website to go the way of the Sydney Trains website in the near future.

Fleet Lists wrote:What is on the Opal website to contradict N90/N91? - I cant find anything. I do note that Opal is out of date - it still mentions N100. But then I expect the Opla website to go the way of the Sydney Trains website in the near future.

Apologies I meant to reference the Transport Info Website (not Opal), where they list all the routes from "Ryde Depot" where on-board tickets will no longer be sold. A couple of months ago I challenged why N90/N91 were not on the list as they are operated out of the relevant depot. As I've found out for myself, cash tickets are indeed no longer sold on either NightRide route, despite being omitted from the list

Fleet Lists wrote:What is on the Opal website to contradict N90/N91? - I cant find anything. I do note that Opal is out of date - it still mentions N100. But then I expect the Opla website to go the way of the Sydney Trains website in the near future.

Apologies I meant to reference the Transport Info Website (not Opal), where they list all the routes from "Ryde Depot" where on-board tickets will no longer be sold. A couple of months ago I challenged why N90/N91 were not on the list as they are operated out of the relevant depot. As I've found out for myself, cash tickets are indeed no longer sold on either NightRide route, despite being omitted from the list

The list was prepared (but not published) before STA took over the two Nightride routes - hence their omission. Also keep in mind that before the new NIghtride timetables came into force, Nightride routes were under the control of Sydney Trains and hence would not have come under the cashless arrangement but with the new Nightride timetables, the responsibility for Nightride routes moved to Transport for NSW who delegated each route to a Sydney region operated by an operator who operated both Nightride routes and a region hence some Nightride routes may be operated by an operator away from their normal region(s).

Linto63 wrote:The 8 and free was clearly being rorted. Remember the days of the Monday morning shuttle when people were shuttling back and forth between the 2 light rail stops in Darling Harbour working multiple cards to get the required number of trips for about $18 while others were paying $60?

Of course and they should have known that would happen. It was poor form to ever implement the free trips but at least they are gone.

Probably served a purpose in the early Opal days encouraging people to switch from paper tickets, but by the end was right out of hand, particularly with some actually turning it into an income stream running cards for others. Was naive of the then transport minister and now premier to think it wouldn't be exploited.

Still can be done, but takes a lot more trips to get there and the rewards are far less.

Linto63 wrote:Probably served a purpose in the early Opal days encouraging people to switch from paper tickets.

To hide the fact that periodical tickets and their associated discounts were gone.

I used to by quarterly tickets.

The lack of a periodical or any similar scheme has increased my commuting costs considerably (over and above regular fare increases).

You could successfully argue that periodical discounting is not appropriate with a 'modern' ticketing system, but my case (and many others) the loss of the periodical discount and subsequent loss of the free travel reward that was meant to compensate for it has resulted in a significant fare hike.

I wouldn't be so sore over it if the government had been honest about it and just said up front 'we are abolishing all discounts for regular travellers'.